Very Different Pages
by ejosephinemachine
Summary: Lily and James are known for butting heads, but there are real feelings there. As of their fifth year, he feelings are decidedly one-sided. Lily feels only mild irritation and James hasn't quite admitted to himself, or his three very persistent friends, that he likes Lily and they don't like it. Kind of aimless Marauder banter, light on the plot.


Note: I kind of need to apologise in advance for this, because I started off thinking that a big chunk of this could go in another, longer story that I'm writing, but it takes place too early and the emotions and stuff would mean doing a flashback or something and I think it might ruin the progress of that story, but I thought there was some good bits and I love the relationship between the Marauders, which is by and large absent in my other Lily-centric story, so here is some Marauder-y banter, What do you think?

James and Lily were running down the third floor corridor for very different reasons. Lily had forgotten to complete an important piece of transfiguration homework and was currently taking a note to the Ravenclaw common room for Karen, in return for which she would get to share the notes that Karen had compiled to help with the difficult tasks set out by Hogwarts strictest professor.

James was, in a not uncommon occurrence, running away from the scene of a recently committed infraction of the school rules. On this occasion, he was running from the caretaker, a viciously nasty old wizard called Eldridge Zeller.

Lily was conscious of the time, wanting to get to the other houses' common room and back before she was in danger of being out after curfew. She wasn't overly concerned about being caught, she knew the castle well enough to avoid that, but she didn't want to be up working on the homework until dawn. It was this desire to get at least a little sleep, something that would become rarer as they drew closer to the OWL exams. Also, she may or may not be avoiding her friend Severus, who had been becoming increasingly difficult to be around. When he wasn't sniping at her or picking apart her every move, he had been making sure that no one was watching them, even when they were doing dull, innocuous things like studying or chatting. She had been taking fairly awkward routes around the castle to avoid anywhere in which she might find a group of Slytherins, but it was difficult as they had taken to roving about the castle, picking on anyone they came across. So, Lily had been running away from the sound of any large group and this was another one of those times.

James was conscious of the fact that he might be caught at any moment and he wanted to put as much distance between himself and the scene of a furious McGonagall and a crying Bertram Aubrey with a face swollen to twice its normal, bulbous size. He knew that he would get detention for this, and he knew that running away wasn't going to get him or Sirius out of trouble, but part of the fun was in being chased down, he thought. So both he and Sirius had run, and as was their custom they had separated. There was a golden coin in his pocket waiting to be joined by one of Sirius's if he could only evade McGonagall and Zeller for longer than his friend.

So the two Gryffindors were, by coincidence, heading down the same corridor, each of them looking behind them as they paced. Both were looking for the caretaker, or a professor, though of course one of them had a far clearer idea of where these people were.

It was this distraction that resulted in the collision. James would have said that Lily had been oblivious and had fallen into him. Lily would argue that James, in a pathetic attempt to be funny, or a stubborn refusal to move out her way, had charged into her.

Whoever ran into who, they were soon both clutching their foreheads in pain. One of Lily's feet ached where James had stomped, she thought intentionally, on her shoe, and James was rubbing with his free hand at his rib where Lily's hand had flown out and made contact. Both looked apologetic and confused until they saw the other's face.

James immediately smiled, a smirk spreading across his face and his eyes lighting up a little. Perhaps it was the hope that if he was found now, in the company of Lily Evans, he might have a reasonable excuse for where he had been at the time of the hexing.

Lily's reaction was more controlled. She certainly didn't smile, but her frown was contained and her expression became defensive and, when she spoke, her irritation was clear.

"Thanks a lot, Potter. Just what I needed after a long day of classes and hours of homework, a broken foot and a massive bruise on my forehead."

"Yeah, I've been planning this for weeks, thought it'd be a nice surprise for you."

"So thoughtful!"

"Aren't I?"

The look on his face looked so honest, like he was entirely convinced that this had been a nice encounter, that she almost laughed. Lily knew that a laugh to Potter was tantamount to an admission that you found him the most charming and hilarious person around. It really didn't take much to make James Potter think highly of himself and Lily never wanted to think that she had contributed towards his inflated ego.

She was about to tell him exactly how thoughtless she thought he was when a loud shout came from the end of the corridor. Both their hearts plummeted simultaneously, perhaps the first time they had ever had the same feeling at the same time.

"Potter!" It was McGonagall, and Lily, who had been expecting her name to be the one shouted, turned to James.

"What did you do?"

He looked wounded. "Why do you assume I did something? She might be charging down the corridor to tell me about my excellent test mark, you don't know!"

"Is she?" Lily knew the answer but it was difficult to keep her face straight and her tone devoid of laughter when she looked at the wide-eyed, wounded expression he had adopted.

"Could be. It is unlikely, given the fact that I just hexed somebody when she was about three feet away, but you never know."

"I really think I do."

"Judgmental, Evans, very judgmental."

She bristled at that but there was no time to say anything as McGonagall was upon them.

"Potter!"

"Yes, Professor?" he smiled innocently.

Lily wasn't a cowardly person, she was a Gryffindor after all. She liked to think that there weren't many things that she would run from, but she was absolutely certain, without a shadow of a doubt, that she would run from McGonagall. Particularly McGonagall with that expression on her already-stern face.

Even though Lily wasn't the one that the professor was coming for, she still felt a twisting sense of dread. She was amazed that James was still standing beside her and hadn't used her as a human shield before sprinting away. He was a Gryffindor too, so she supposed he must have some amount of courage, but it was hard to think of someone who hexed people and ran away as 'brave'.

"Mr. Potter! Of all the things I've seen-"

"I know, shocking isn't it? Evans out here so far from the common room only-" he glanced at his wrist "-ten minutes before curfew. She's probably up to something! Fortunately, I apprehended h-"

"Enough, Potter! I have had more than enough of you and Mr Black this evening. I don't suppose you ever considered arranging your duels and pranks into some sort of timetable, so that we might all recover from the first before the second hits us?"

James' easy smile had not faltered, he looked as unconcerned as if they were discussing a library book that was nearly due.

"Ah, Professor, that's half the fun, the unpredictability of it all!"

"I suppose you can predict what happens next, being familiar as you are with the school's punishments."

"Detention?"

"Indeed. I think Friday evening." She turned to go back the way she had come. "For a start. And get back to the common room, you too Miss Evans, or you'll be joining Potter in detention."

"Oh, all my dreams coming true!" James laughed. Lily apologised to the professor and tucked the note she had been meant to deliver into her pocket. She certainly wasn't going to risk having a detention just to get some answers for a piece of homework. She would just have to do it herself.

Groaning to herself at the thought of the amount of work that lay ahead of her, and the hours it would take before she could sleep, she started off down the corridor towards the Tower.

She had hoped that James might have decided to take a different route. There were, after all numerous ways to reach that side of the castle through the twisting, elaborate maze of corridors. She had often suspected that James Potter and his friends knew a great deal of the secret paths and they often seemed to pop up from thin air, falling through a wall that was actually a doorway or clambering up a staircase that hadn't been there moments before.

For whatever reason, James seemed to have decided that her way was the best way and she could hear a second set of footsteps quicken their pace behind her, as McGonagall's steps grew quieter.

"Oi, Evans, slow down! Bloke with a cracked rib here, thanks to you!"

"I hardly touched you, and you don't see me complaining about my possibly-broken toe, do you?"

"What is it that you're doing right now, if not complaining about said toe?"

She stuck out her tongue and sped up. James never caught up with her, he seemed happy to match her pace but keep a few steps behind her. She wasn't sure if he did this specifically to annoy her or if there was some other reason but she couldn't relax as they walked.

They were almost back to the Tower, and Lily was just hoping that the rest of the walk could pass in the silence that had characterised their time together since McGonagall had left. Yet it was her that broke the silence with a question that she wished she wasn't curious to hear the answer to.

"What did you do?"

"Not really anything to do with you."

She had expected him to launch into the story of whatever he had done, with that usual crowing, prideful tone that he employed when regaling the entire common room with some story.

James wasn't the sort to reject an opportunity to talk about exactly which rules he had broken and which professors he had outsmarted.

"Fine. Don't tell me. I don't really want to know anyway, it'll only irritate me."

The rest of the walk was very, very quiet with Lily kicking herself for having given the impression of even vaguely caring what he did with his time.

She was awake until the early hours of the morning, writing out answers to the questions after questions that McGonagall had decided to torture the class with. Karen relented surprisingly quickly even though Lily hadn't delivered the note, and so she had all of her friend's notes to help her. Unfortunately, the notes required you to understand the general principles, they had clearly been written b someone who already knew every one of the answers. This meant that she was stuck in the infuriating situation of having every one of the answers in front of her, but not being able to tell what they were the answers to.

She started crying with frustration at about eleven o'clock and it wasn't until after midnight that she had scribbled something un response to every one of the questions.

Not bothering to push her books from her bed, though taking care to fold her homework neatly and drop it into her bag, she wriggled under the bedcovers and was asleep within seconds.

In a dormitory on the other side of the Tower, a debate that had started hours ago was still going on. It had started loudly, but by this point it had descended into whispering one word responses to hissed questions as they lay in the dark, both trying to have the last word.

That was a common occurrence in arguments between James Potter and Sirius Black. They would argue all day, not proper arguing but there was always some debate. It would invariably end when one got too tired to respond and whoever had spoken last was the winner.

"But it was McGonagall that caught you."

"Doesn't make a difference, we both got caught."

"Yeah, but you were back to the Common Room before me which means you were caught quicker."

"We don't know that, I'm a faster walker than you so you could have got caught and just taken ages to get back!"

"Well, Pete?" Sirius waved a hand lazily towards where Peter Pettigrew sat on his bed, chewing at his lip as he watched the progression of the debate, just waiting to be dragged in.

"Well, what?" he asked vaguely.

"You were watching the map weren't you, wasn't that your role in the game? You watch for who gets caught first?"

"Yeah, suppose it was..."

"Well?" Sirius and James asked, in perfect unison.

Peter looked around, as if he was hoping that Remus might step in and come to his rescue. He didn't like siding with one of his friends and always seemed to find arguments genuinely distressing, as if James and Sirius were about to seriously fall out. Remus was not forthcoming. He was better than Peter was at not getting dragged into the frequent James and Sirius melodramas, and when he was involved, it was usually because the whole thing had been his idea and he had planned and initiated it.

Since Remus was engrossed in his book, ignoring the chatter around him, Peter was left to negotiate a peace.

"It was Sirius."

James' triumphant shout must have been loud enough to be heard by everyone in the Tower, and Sirius's accompanying groan of disappointment was enough to draw Remus into the discussion.

"Sorry, but Pete's right, there wasn't much in it. It looked like you were going to get away completely, James, until you ran into Lily."

At this, James looked a little uncomfortable. His friends knew, in the way that friends tend to know, that James had something of a crush on Lily Evans, but he wasn't overly keen to admit it, and they rarely pushed him on the matter. There were a lot of things you could tease James about but his friends had learned that Lily and James's feelings towards her were off-limits.

In a school as small as Hogwarts, everyone was bound to come up in conversation at some point. It was the kind of thing you got used to, but James still grew a little uncomfortable when it was Lily's name. Sirius was decidedly less tactful than the others, and that, combined with his irritation at recently having lost a bet, was enough to make him far less willing than either of the other two to let the mention of Lily go unremarked upon.

"So, how is the charming Lily?"

"Fine. She's fine."

"What was she doing out right before curfew? Sneaking down to the dungeons to see Snivellus?"

"No! I-" James realised he didn't know what Lily had been doing, he hadn't asked. He ought to take more of an interest in what she was doing, he had been so caught up in the excitement of the bet, and with the feeling of rushing happiness that had accompanied seeing Lily, that he hadn't quite been able to think straight. He wasn't the sort of person that cared about making a good impression, he generally just assumed that people would like him, but with her, it was as if he was trying so hard to be funny that when he walked away, and when he had time to consider it, a long list of the things that he should have done differently flooded into his mind and he cursed himself for not being able to just be himself.

He could see the smile that was crossing Sirius' face, and could feel that familiar tension that he felt when someone mentioned Lily's name, but he forced himself to look unaffected, and lay back on his bed, grabbing one of the sweets that littered the table next to his bed and chucking it into the air, catching it in his mouth.

He was hoping desperately that this would end any more mentions of Lily. He knew it wouldn't.

Sirius took a moment, the smile never leaving his face as he considered the best way to proceed.

"I reckon Evans must have been going to see Snape. What else would she be doing?"

"Maybe she was going to get a book." Peter chipped in helpfully, not able to keep a slight facsimile of Sirius' grin from edging its way onto his face.

"Maybe it's not really our business." Remus, the ever-present voice of reason, added to the discussion. If he had been hoping to end James' torment, he wasn't successful. All he managed to do was draw himself further into it. Sirius turned to him.

"You know her the best, don't you?"

"Hardly."

"Well since we're not likely to be having a tea party with Snape any time soon for us to bring up the charming Evans, you're our best bet. What does she think about our James?"

"We don't exactly talk about James. Surprisingly, he doesn't get many mentions in our Charms textbook."

James tried desperately to divert the conversation away from Lily. Rolling onto one side then pushing himself up on his elbows, he looked across the room.

"Did you just call me charming, Remus dear?"

"I thought you were the deer?" Peter snorted. Sirius laughed at that, a ringing sort of laugh that made Peter flush in pride.

"Either way, you're looking a bit moony, Remus. Do you have a confession to make to James here?"

There was a moment when James thought that the puns had done the trick and they were drifting away from the earlier topic, but if there was one constant with Sirius, it was his ability to keep prodding a sore spot.

"I don't think we could deal with the drama of an unrequited love triangle! It's bad enough with this one drawing love hearts all over his parchment and writing L.E. on books. If you start doodling little antlers and J.P. I swear I'll-"

James sat up indignantly, the flush on his face now clear.

"I do not draw love hearts!"

"Mate, it's not the hearts that are the problem, it's the general love-sick puppy thing."

"Oh, shut up!" He fell back onto the bed, trying to make it look like he was covering a yawn with his hand when really he was trying to conceal his now-blatant embarrassment.

"You've got to sort it out, Jac Prewett saw it in the Herbology book I borrowed from him and I had to convince her I was learning French." He noticed Peter's blank look and shrugged uncertainly, "'le' is French for 'the', I think."

"Oh, stop pretending you're not bloody fluent. Isn't your family motto French or is it Latin?" Lupin had a smirk on his face that might have looked more at home on Sirius, but he always found it funny how desperate Sirius was to appear removed from anything that might suggest nobility.

"Yeah, French, doesn't mean we speak it though. Latin would fit better, being a dead language, family full of death eaters."

There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, which was Sirius' favourite response to any discussion of his family. Peter quickly searched for a way to get out of the conversational hole into which they had fallen.

"Did you?" Peter inquired falteringly, not even really sure what he was asking.

"What, learn French? You're joking, right? That might have made my mother happy, I couldn't have that, I've got a reputation to uphold!" The words were as serious, but there was a sparkle in his eyes and a humour to the upwards quirk of his lips which made everyone around him, even James who was still locked in a state of embarrassment, relax. James sat up on his bed, willing himself to look like he had forgotten any earlier topics and was in no way shrivelling up inside at the thought of Lily Evans and love heart doodles, which he hadn't done. He might have drawn a few broomsticks, and cartoon-ish lions, and perhaps one or two unintentional initials, but there had been absolutely no hearts involved. He pretended he was entertained by the conversation, and laughed a little too loudly and a lot too late at Sirius' comment. Peter gave him a funny look but spoke again.

"No, I mean did you convince her? She might think you've got a thing for L.E."

"Nah, I was pretty convincing. Although..." He glanced quickly at James, a look of fake consideration on his face. "There's something to be said for that!"

"You and Lily?" Peter had caught on to Sirius' joke, and was playing along, observing James carefully.

He absolutely wasn't going to react, he knew what they were doing. He smiled placidly, and reached down for the bag of books on the floor, pulling out the first one to come to hand. Herbology. That was just what he had been looking for. Even though there was no Herbology homework and almost every other class had assigned copious amounts of reading, he almost convinced himself that he wanted to do some extra reading and settled the book on his knees, leaning back on the pillows and keeping his face passive and unengaged as he listened intently to every word that passed around him.

Sirius mused for a moment then nodded.

"Well, she's a muggleborn, which might finally make my mother's head explode. She's not bad-looking, of course, and I've heard her actually be quite funny, y'know, when she's slagging off James, or when she insists Snape isn't a slimy bag of Stinksap."

"Yeah, if I'm being honest though" James refused to look up, concentrating hard on a picture of something with more legs than a plant should ever have. "I think you might have a bit of competition!"

"What, Remus? Nah, I don't think that's anything serious, they just share a mutual love of books."

Remus, who had been trying to focus back on his book, but who had been dragged back by the mention of his name.

"I don't think you can say anything considering how much of this year you spent in the Library."

Sirius' offended gasp was so exaggerated that James buckled, a smile bursting onto his face.

"How... Dare...You! I spent no more time than necessary in that hell hole. I borrowed a lot of books, yes, but I don't need you ruining my reputation for being supernaturally clever and passing every test without studying. I don't need people thinking I actually work!"

He took another scandalised breath before carrying on.

"Besides, You spend time with books because you like books, I spent so much time on books because I wanted to do something, and books told me how and you know me, I'm doggedly determined!" He looked around, as if expecting a better reaction to his pun than the three dead-eyed, unamused stares that his friends forced onto their faces.

Remus was the first to break the silence.

"In any case, I don't think I'm the competition that Pete was referring to?"

"Ah!" Sirius nodded sagely. "Snape. I always suspected. He fancies her, of course, but I highly doubt Evans feels the same. She has eyes, doesn't she?"

"Yep!" Peter said, a wistful tone to his voice. "Particularly pretty green ones if I remember correctly, isn't that right, James?"

He hadn't expected them to try and actively engage him in the conversation, he thought they were just going to talk as if he wasn't their until his head exploded in irritation.

"Huh- what?" He tried to look as Remus had, as if the sound of his name had been the first think he had heard.

"Lily? Her eyes."

"Yes, I believe she has two." He wasn't going to give them anything. Even if it meant acting like he didn't know Lily's second name, he wasn't going to be goaded into owning up to any of the twisting, swooping, fluttering feelings that her presence brought to him.

"We've just been wondering if Snape and Lily are a couple."

"Nah, don't think so, she's not that stupid." Not that stupid, was that really all James could admit to thinking about Lily in front of his three closest friends? Some Gryffindor he was, what happened to the confidence, the surety that he displayed in every other aspect of his life, where was that when the opportunity presented itself to say 'if any of you ask Lily Evans out, I will hex your hair off!'. The way he had been feeling he was more likely to say 'If you want to ask out the girl of my dreams, go ahead, I can help you write a nice speech about all her best points if you'd like?'.

"So, no competition for the hand of Lily Evans then?" Sirius stood up, stretching his legs, and looked around questioningly. James panicked. Sirius wasn't actually going to go ask her out, was he? Even if James wouldn't admit it, Sirius knew, he had to know, how James felt. Of all the bad things James could recognise Sirius might be, he was loyal to his friends. Surely that trait wouldn't abandon him at this crucial moment?

James tried to look as if the idea of Lily and Sirius wasn't affecting him, but he felt a twist in his stomach as he pictured Sirius sitting with his arm slung over the back of Lily's chair in class, his hands in her hair as they kissed in the corridor in between classes, an image which James had pictured himself involved in on a few occasions, now horribly soured at the thought of another in the place he wanted to be.

If James had explained the flutter she caused in his chest, the way his throat tickled and his entire face seemed to overheat, the way he suddenly lost track of the image he wanted to present to her, and became a tactless, bravado-fuelled idiot, if James had mentioned any of that, Sirius wouldn't joke. James couldn't mention it though because, and it embarrassed him to admit it, he wasn't entirely, or at all, certain that she would feel the same way. She was the only person in his life that he had met and not been entirely confident that he could get them to like him. James never needed everyone to like him because he was confident that, if he wanted to, he could charm them and joke with them and become their friend. Lily, the headstrong girl with the Slytherin friend, was a perfect storm of factors that made her pretty much the only girl James could have felt like this about.

She was muggleborn. Not that this made the slightest bit of difference to James, but it meant that she had no impression of him before they met. A lot of people who had learned from their parents about the wizarding world had heard the names of the Potters, and their son. They were a prominent pair of Ministry workers, and were well-known for, among other things, their strong work ethic, their lavish and frequent parties and their dedication to equality between all magical and non-magical people. This meant that wizarding children knew of him, those from pure-blood, Slytherin-bound old families had been warned to dislike him and those from half-blood or otherwise less prejudiced families had respected his name and been interested to see which of his parents traits he inherited.

So, Lily knew nothing of James before they met, and it had just so happened that when they met, Lily had already been friends with Severus Snape.

The problem with this was that Severus Snape was the one person who had the worse idea of who and what James was in the world. There was very little James could do to counter the amount of time Snape could spend pouring not-always-unwarranted poison about James into Lily's ear. She heard all the bad things, and none of the good.

She was also a Gryffindor, and the traits of the house meant that she tended towards the stubborn side. This meant that the impression she had of James as a bully and the impression she had of Severus as an innocent victim were, for her, set in stone and not likely to be changed by a box of Honeyduke's Chocolate Cauldrons, which had been James' master plan with any of the two other girls he had ever liked.

Lily had an impression of James and it would take a great deal of effort, and more than a little luck to change it.

He was having to face up to the possibility that perhaps it would never happen. Ever since these feelings had first barged rudely into his mind, he had assumed that one day they would be returned. Now that idea seemed childish and idiotic. Why would we one day, out of nowhere, realise that she was head-over-heels in love with the boy that had been nothing but trouble and had shown himself to be completely thoughtless. Perhaps, Lily would never see that he wasn't the person she thought he was, and perhaps, she was right.

This was a lot of self-doubt to come flooding towards a very self-confident person and he dealt with it the way that any teenage boy in front of his three friends would. He got annoyed.

"Listen, Sirius, it's great that you think Evans would go near an idiot like you with a ten-foot bargepole but for the rest of us, can you just give it a rest? We've got too much to do to pretend like you're in any way interested in asking out Lily Evans."

It was the closest he had come to saying how he felt outright, and he knew that he had confirmed it beyond any doubt, but it felt safer in the subtext.

A lot of other people would have been insulted, defensive or confrontational when facing what James had just said to them, but it said a lot about who Sirius was and what mattered to him that he brushed it off without even a double take.

"Right then, let's get down to work." He crossed the room to Remus' side and picked up one of the books that lay on the side table. "I suppose if people already think that I actually put effort in, I might as well..."

Throwing himself back onto his bed, he huffed loudly but started to flick through the pages, occasionally throwing a mournful sigh or glance to one of his more focussed friends, or a resentful suggestion about what they could be doing at that moment. The room descended into silence as they worked through the mountain of homework that teachers had burdened them with.

James felt bad for snapping at Sirius, and worse for calling him an idiot, so, when he had finally put an end to the long, but fairly straightforward transfiguration homework, he swung his legs round and clicked his fingers.

"Anyone fancy a snack?" Fishing around under his bed, he pulled out the prized Invisibility Cloak and Sirius immediately brightened.

When James passed through the corridor that he had been running down earlier, where he had bumped into Lily, he couldn't help a bit of his old confidence return when he thought through the conversation. She had seemed interested, if a little exasperated, at what he was up to, and he could have sworn, though he thought it might have been more in his head, that at one point he had seen a smile straining to cross her face.

A little more hopeful, and with the promise of bacon sandwiches, the boys' traditional if slightly unusual midnight snack, he quickened his pace. He had to slow down a moment later when he nearly whipped the Cloak off Sirius, who had been shuffling along close behind him, and who yelped at the rush of cold air and exposed feet.

"We're getting too tall to share the Cloak, I'm nostalgic for the days when we were little pipsqueaks. Remember all four of us hid under it once?" Sirius' voice in his ear was expected but he jumped a little anyway.

"No, we tried to hide four of us, and ended up getting caught because all our legs were poking out. Remember, you stood on the bottom of the cloak as we were walking past Zeller to get it to cover us and ended up pulling it completely off us?"

"Oh yeah! What was that, our first November?"

"Yeah, I reckon so! Long time since then, isn't it?"

"Stop acting like it's over, we're hardly over the hill. You've still got to convince some girl to marry you and I've got to convince about fifty to stop asking, and then we can look back on the golden days and smile."

"Are you not going to get married? I always dreamed of playing pairs at Quidditch with our wives. What will we do now?"

"Dunno, maybe you'll have a kid, and I can play on their team."

"I'm not having a kid..." James had really run out of things to say about his future, and he couldn't deny that his mind was drifting slightly, to this impossible future.

"Wait, you're not pregnant?"

He had to bite back a laugh. It was very like Sirius to interrupt a pleasant thought with something downright bizarre. Before James could speak, Sirius went on. "I was so sure I had figured out your late-night cravings and your mood swings... Well, back to the drawing board, don't suppose Moony got in a bite last time?"

"Don't say that! If Remus was here... You know what he's like, he's so jumpy and we only just got him to let us... change." Even though they were alone, the corridor dead silent, James didn't exactly want to broadcast either that Remus was a werewolf, or that he, Sirius and Peter had, after years of reading and researching that had intensified in the last year, managed to become Animagi, wizards who could change themselves into a particular animal at will. It was illegal, and Remus would be shunned if anyone in the school found out, so it seemed like the sort of thing to keep quiet about. Sirius had always been a bit more relaxed about this sort of thing, but James felt the need to remind him.

"Fair enough, but if it's neither of those, I've only got one more idea!"

"What's that?"

"It's, I'm afraid, a nearly incurable illness. James, I hate to be the one to tell you..."

He stopped them in their tracks, put a reassuring hand on James shoulder and adopted the sort of face that a terrible actor might use to convey sympathy.

"It is my professional opinion, and that of my colleagues, Drs Moony and Wormtail, that you are..." He sniffed, as if it were all too much for him. James stood, squinting confusedly at Sirius, trying hard to remember why he was friends with someone as idiotic as this.

"A whiny b-"

"STUDENTS OUT OF BED! STUDENTS IN THE CORRIDOR! RULE BREAKERS!" The two boys looked up and saw Peeves, the school's resident poltergeist, hovering above them and bellowing. He hadn't seen them, as throughout Sirius' speech they had been covered by the Cloak, but their voices, and the fact that a good five inches of their feet and legs were outside the Cloak's bounds meant that it was easy to detect them. A light moved towards them in the distance, voices of at least two people coming towards them and with a look at one another that betrayed a mutual deep excitement, they started to run.

"Double or nothing I can get back to the Common Room before you."

"Without getting caught? You're on!" James replied as Sirius freed himself from the folds of the velvety Cloak and they charged down a corridor towards the Tower.

Sirius started to pull ahead, obviously more motivated by the two galleon prize than James, and as the distance grew, he turned his head slightly and spoke.

"Y'know that whole 'Husband-and-wife Quidditch Team' scenario you've been daydreaming about? I don't think it's going to happen."

"Why not?"

"Well, have you seen Evans on a broom? She's better off in your cheering section!"

Sirius had chosen his moment perfectly, he already had enough momentum to carry him out of reach of James swinging hand, and the surprise of the comment had slowed James enough to give him a commanding lead.

All in all, it had been a rough night for James Potter, he had lost two galleons, missed out on what would have surely been some excellent bacon sandwiches, spent the majority of his night doing homework, and been forced to admit, if only really to himself that the girl he liked, was in no way likely to ever feel the same way.

It would get better for James Potter.

He would make the two galleons back the next night in an ill-advised bet with Sirius about who could eat the most chips at dinner.

After a long Quidditch practice burned away what little energy that had been procured from said chips, he would take a more successful midnight trip to the kitchens and would eat enough bacon sandwiches to win a further five sickles from Sirius, who proceeded to swear never to bet against James in food-based bets again.

He did have to do homework again, but having managed to receive the highest mark in the Transfiguration homework, he would be asked by Lily Evans to explain Question 6 and would make her laugh so much while helping her out that she had tears in her eyes.

As far as the girl he liked not feeling the same way, it would take a long time before things got better for him there. It would get a lot worse, so bad that he thought she would never speak to him again, then a bit better, then a lot better, but as of that night, James Potter and Lily Evans were on very different pages, and he would just have to wait.


End file.
